Simple pulses for elimination of leakage in weakly nonlinear qubits.

In realizations of quantum computing, a two-level system (qubit) is often singled out from the many levels of an anharmonic oscillator. In these cases, simple qubit control fails on short time scales because of coupling to leakage levels. We provide an easy to implement analytic formula that inhibits this leakage from any single-control analog or pixelated pulse. It is based on adding a second control that is proportional to the time derivative of the first. For realistic parameters of superconducting qubits, this strategy reduces the error by an order of magnitude relative to the state of the art, all based on smooth and feasible pulse shapes. These results show that even weak anharmonicity is sufficient and in general not a limiting factor for implementing quantum gates.